The senator Olybrius, of the Anician family, might esteem himself the

lawful heir of the Western empire. He had married Placidia, the younger

daughter of Valentinian, after she was restored by Genseric; who still

detained her sister Eudoxia, as the wife, or rather as the captive,

of his son. The king of the Vandals supported, by threats and

solicitations, the fair pretensions of his Roman ally; and assigned, as

one of the motives of the war, the refusal of the senate and people to

acknowledge their lawful prince, and the unworthy preference which they

had given to a stranger. The friendship of the public enemy might

render Olybrius still more unpopular to the Italians; but when Ricimer

meditated the ruin of the emperor Anthemius, he tempted, with the

offer of a diadem, the candidate who could justify his rebellion by an

illustrious name and a royal alliance. The husband of Placidia, who,

like most of his ancestors, had been invested with the consular dignity,

might have continued to enjoy a secure and splendid fortune in the

peaceful residence of Constantinople; nor does he appear to have been

tormented by such a genius as cannot be amused or occupied, unless

by the administration of an empire. Yet Olybrius yielded to the

importunities of his friends, perhaps of his wife; rashly plunged

into the dangers and calamities of a civil war; and, with the secret

connivance of the emperor Leo, accepted the Italian purple, which was

bestowed, and resumed, at the capricious will of a Barbarian. He landed

without obstacle (for Genseric was master of the sea) either at Ravenna,

or the port of Ostia, and immediately proceeded to the camp of Ricimer,

where he was received as the sovereign of the Western world.

The patrician, who had extended his posts from the Anio to the Melvian

bridge, already possessed two quarters of Rome, the Vatican and the

Janiculum, which are separated by the Tyber from the rest of the

city; and it may be conjectured, that an assembly of seceding senators

imitated, in the choice of Olybrius, the forms of a legal election.

But the body of the senate and people firmly adhered to the cause of

Anthemius; and the more effectual support of a Gothic army enabled him

to prolong his reign, and the public distress, by a resistance of three

months, which produced the concomitant evils of famine and pestilence.

At length Ricimer made a furious assault on the bridge of Hadrian, or

St. Angelo; and the narrow pass was defended with equal valor by the

Goths, till the death of Gilimer, their leader. The victorious troops,

breaking down every barrier, rushed with irresistible violence into

the heart of the city, and Rome (if we may use the language of a

contemporary pope) was subverted by the civil fury of Anthemius and

Ricimer. The unfortunate Anthemius was dragged from his concealment, and

inhumanly massacred by the command of his son-in-law; who thus added a

third, or perhaps a fourth, emperor to the number of his victims. The

soldiers, who united the rage of factious citizens with the savage

manners of Barbarians, were indulged, without control, in the license

of rapine and murder: the crowd of slaves and plebeians, who were

unconcerned in the event, could only gain by the indiscriminate pillage;

and the face of the city exhibited the strange contrast of stern cruelty

and dissolute intemperance. Forty days after this calamitous event, the

subject, not of glory, but of guilt, Italy was delivered, by a painful

disease, from the tyrant Ricimer, who bequeathed the command of his army

to his nephew Gundobald, one of the princes of the Burgundians. In the

same year all the principal actors in this great revolution were removed

from the stage; and the whole reign of Olybrius, whose death does not

betray any symptoms of violence, is included within the term of seven

months. He left one daughter, the offspring of his marriage with

Placidia; and the family of the great Theodosius, transplanted from

Spain to Constantinople, was propagated in the female line as far as the

eighth generation.

Chapter XXXVI: Total Extinction Of The Western Empire.—Part V.

Whilst the vacant throne of Italy was abandoned to lawless Barbarians,

the election of a new colleague was seriously agitated in the council

of Leo. The empress Verina, studious to promote the greatness of her own

family, had married one of her nieces to Julius Nepos, who succeeded

his uncle Marcellinus in the sovereignty of Dalmatia, a more solid

possession than the title which he was persuaded to accept, of Emperor

of the West. But the measures of the Byzantine court were so languid and

irresolute, that many months elapsed after the death of Anthemius, and

even of Olybrius, before their destined successor could show himself,

with a respectable force, to his Italian subjects. During that interval,

Glycerius, an obscure soldier, was invested with the purple by his

patron Gundobald; but the Burgundian prince was unable, or unwilling, to

support his nomination by a civil war: the pursuits of domestic ambition

recalled him beyond the Alps, and his client was permitted to exchange

the Roman sceptre for the bishopric of Salona. After extinguishing such

a competitor, the emperor Nepos was acknowledged by the senate, by

the Italians, and by the provincials of Gaul; his moral virtues, and

military talents, were loudly celebrated; and those who derived any

private benefit from his government, announced, in prophetic strains,

the restoration of the public felicity. Their hopes (if such hopes had

been entertained) were confounded within the term of a single year, and

the treaty of peace, which ceded Auvergne to the Visigoths, is the only

event of his short and inglorious reign. The most faithful subjects of

Gaul were sacrificed, by the Italian emperor, to the hope of domestic

security; but his repose was soon invaded by a furious sedition of

the Barbarian confederates, who, under the command of Orestes, their

general, were in full march from Rome to Ravenna. Nepos trembled

at their approach; and, instead of placing a just confidence in the

strength of Ravenna, he hastily escaped to his ships, and retired to his

Dalmatian principality, on the opposite coast of the Adriatic. By this

shameful abdication, he protracted his life about five years, in a

very ambiguous state, between an emperor and an exile, till he was

assassinated at Salona by the ungrateful Glycerius, who was translated,

perhaps as the reward of his crime, to the archbishopric of Milan.

The nations who had asserted their independence after the death of

Attila, were established, by the right of possession or conquest, in

the boundless countries to the north of the Danube; or in the Roman

provinces between the river and the Alps. But the bravest of their youth

enlisted in the army of confederates, who formed the defence and the

terror of Italy; and in this promiscuous multitude, the names of the

Heruli, the Scyrri, the Alani, the Turcilingi, and the Rugians, appear

to have predominated. The example of these warriors was imitated by

Orestes, the son of Tatullus, and the father of the last Roman emperor

of the West. Orestes, who has been already mentioned in this History,

had never deserted his country. His birth and fortunes rendered him one

of the most illustrious subjects of Pannonia. When that province was

ceded to the Huns, he entered into the service of Attila, his lawful

sovereign, obtained the office of his secretary, and was repeatedly sent

ambassador to Constantinople, to represent the person, and signify the

commands, of the imperious monarch. The death of that conqueror restored

him to his freedom; and Orestes might honorably refuse either to follow

the sons of Attila into the Scythian desert, or to obey the Ostrogoths,

who had usurped the dominion of Pannonia. He preferred the service of

the Italian princes, the successors of Valentinian; and as he possessed

the qualifications of courage, industry, and experience, he advanced

with rapid steps in the military profession, till he was elevated,

by the favor of Nepos himself, to the dignities of patrician, and

master-general of the troops. These troops had been long accustomed to

reverence the character and authority of Orestes, who affected their

manners, conversed with them in their own language, and was intimately

connected with their national chieftains, by long habits of familiarity

and friendship. At his solicitation they rose in arms against the

obscure Greek, who presumed to claim their obedience; and when Orestes,

from some secret motive, declined the purple, they consented, with the

same facility, to acknowledge his son Augustulus as the emperor of the

West. By the abdication of Nepos, Orestes had now attained the summit of

his ambitious hopes; but he soon discovered, before the end of the first

year, that the lessons of perjury and ingratitude, which a rebel must

inculcate, will be resorted to against himself; and that the precarious

sovereign of Italy was only permitted to choose, whether he would be

the slave, or the victim, of his Barbarian mercenaries. The dangerous

alliance of these strangers had oppressed and insulted the last

remains of Roman freedom and dignity. At each revolution, their pay and

privileges were augmented; but their insolence increased in a still more

extravagant degree; they envied the fortune of their brethren in Gaul,

Spain, and Africa, whose victorious arms had acquired an independent

and perpetual inheritance; and they insisted on their peremptory demand,

that a third part of the lands of Italy should be immediately divided

among them. Orestes, with a spirit, which, in another situation, might

be entitled to our esteem, chose rather to encounter the rage of an

armed multitude, than to subscribe the ruin of an innocent people. He

rejected the audacious demand; and his refusal was favorable to the

ambition of Odoacer; a bold Barbarian, who assured his fellow-soldiers,

that, if they dared to associate under his command, they might soon

extort the justice which had been denied to their dutiful petitions.

From all the camps and garrisons of Italy, the confederates, actuated

by the same resentment and the same hopes, impatiently flocked to

the standard of this popular leader; and the unfortunate patrician,

overwhelmed by the torrent, hastily retreated to the strong city of

Pavia, the episcopal seat of the holy Epiphanites. Pavia was immediately

besieged, the fortifications were stormed, the town was pillaged; and

although the bishop might labor, with much zeal and some success, to

save the property of the church, and the chastity of female captives,

the tumult could only be appeased by the execution of Orestes. His

brother Paul was slain in an action near Ravenna; and the helpless

Augustulus, who could no longer command the respect, was reduced to

implore the clemency, of Odoacer.

That successful Barbarian was the son of Edecon; who, in some remarkable

transactions, particularly described in a preceding chapter, had been

the colleague of Orestes himself. The honor of an ambassador should be

exempt from suspicion; and Edecon had listened to a conspiracy against

the life of his sovereign. But this apparent guilt was expiated by his

merit or repentance; his rank was eminent and conspicuous; he enjoyed

the favor of Attila; and the troops under his command, who guarded,

in their turn, the royal village, consisted of a tribe of Scyrri, his

immediate and hereditary subjects. In the revolt of the nations, they

still adhered to the Huns; and more than twelve years afterwards, the

name of Edecon is honorably mentioned, in their unequal contests with

the Ostrogoths; which was terminated, after two bloody battles, by the

defeat and dispersion of the Scyrri. Their gallant leader, who did not

survive this national calamity, left two sons, Onulf and Odoacer, to

struggle with adversity, and to maintain as they might, by rapine or

service, the faithful followers of their exile. Onulf directed his steps

towards Constantinople, where he sullied, by the assassination of a

generous benefactor, the fame which he had acquired in arms. His brother

Odoacer led a wandering life among the Barbarians of Noricum, with a

mind and a fortune suited to the most desperate adventures; and when

he had fixed his choice, he piously visited the cell of Severinus, the

popular saint of the country, to solicit his approbation and blessing.

The lowness of the door would not admit the lofty stature of Odoacer:

he was obliged to stoop; but in that humble attitude the saint could

discern the symptoms of his future greatness; and addressing him in a

prophetic tone, "Pursue" (said he) "your design; proceed to Italy; you

will soon cast away this coarse garment of skins; and your wealth will

be adequate to the liberality of your mind." The Barbarian, whose daring

spirit accepted and ratified the prediction, was admitted into the

service of the Western empire, and soon obtained an honorable rank in

the guards. His manners were gradually polished, his military skill was

improved, and the confederates of Italy would not have elected him for

their general, unless the exploits of Odoacer had established a high

opinion of his courage and capacity. Their military acclamations saluted

him with the title of king; but he abstained, during his whole reign,

from the use of the purple and diadem, lest he should offend those

princes, whose subjects, by their accidental mixture, had formed the

victorious army, which time and policy might insensibly unite into a

great nation.

Royalty was familiar to the Barbarians, and the submissive people of

Italy was prepared to obey, without a murmur, the authority which he

should condescend to exercise as the vicegerent of the emperor of the

West. But Odoacer had resolved to abolish that useless and expensive

office; and such is the weight of antique prejudice, that it required

some boldness and penetration to discover the extreme facility of the

enterprise. The unfortunate Augustulus was made the instrument of his

own disgrace: he signified his resignation to the senate; and that

assembly, in their last act of obedience to a Roman prince, still

affected the spirit of freedom, and the forms of the constitution. An

epistle was addressed, by their unanimous decree, to the emperor Zeno,

the son-in-law and successor of Leo; who had lately been restored, after

a short rebellion, to the Byzantine throne. They solemnly "disclaim

the necessity, or even the wish, of continuing any longer the Imperial

succession in Italy; since, in their opinion, the majesty of a sole

monarch is sufficient to pervade and protect, at the same time, both

the East and the West. In their own name, and in the name of the people,

they consent that the seat of universal empire shall be transferred from

Rome to Constantinople; and they basely renounce the right of choosing

their master, the only vestige that yet remained of the authority which

had given laws to the world. The republic (they repeat that name without

a blush) might safely confide in the civil and military virtues of

Odoacer; and they humbly request, that the emperor would invest him with

the title of Patrician, and the administration of the diocese of Italy."

The deputies of the senate were received at Constantinople with some

marks of displeasure and indignation: and when they were admitted to the

audience of Zeno, he sternly reproached them with their treatment of

the two emperors, Anthemius and Nepos, whom the East had successively

granted to the prayers of Italy. "The first" (continued he) "you have

murdered; the second you have expelled; but the second is still alive,

and whilst he lives he is your lawful sovereign." But the prudent Zeno

soon deserted the hopeless cause of his abdicated colleague. His vanity

was gratified by the title of sole emperor, and by the statues erected

to his honor in the several quarters of Rome; he entertained a friendly,

though ambiguous, correspondence with the patrician Odoacer; and he

gratefully accepted the Imperial ensigns, the sacred ornaments of the

throne and palace, which the Barbarian was not unwilling to remove from

the sight of the people.

In the space of twenty years since the death of Valentinian, nine

emperors had successively disappeared; and the son of Orestes, a youth

recommended only by his beauty, would be the least entitled to the

notice of posterity, if his reign, which was marked by the extinction

of the Roman empire in the West, did not leave a memorable era in the

history of mankind. The patrician Orestes had married the daughter

of Count Romulus, of Petovio in Noricum: the name of Augustus,

notwithstanding the jealousy of power, was known at Aquileia as a

familiar surname; and the appellations of the two great founders, of

the city and of the monarchy, were thus strangely united in the last of

their successors. The son of Orestes assumed and disgraced the names

of Romulus Augustus; but the first was corrupted into Momyllus, by

the Greeks, and the second has been changed by the Latins into the

contemptible diminutive Augustulus. The life of this inoffensive youth

was spared by the generous clemency of Odoacer; who dismissed him, with

his whole family, from the Imperial palace, fixed his annual allowance

at six thousand pieces of gold, and assigned the castle of Lucullus,

in Campania, for the place of his exile or retirement. As soon as the

Romans breathed from the toils of the Punic war, they were attracted by

the beauties and the pleasures of Campania; and the country-house of

the elder Scipio at Liternum exhibited a lasting model of their rustic

simplicity. The delicious shores of the Bay of Naples were crowded with

villas; and Sylla applauded the masterly skill of his rival, who had

seated himself on the lofty promontory of Misenum, that commands, on

every side, the sea and land, as far as the boundaries of the horizon.

The villa of Marius was purchased, within a few years, by Lucullus, and

the price had increased from two thousand five hundred, to more

than fourscore thousand, pounds sterling. It was adorned by the new

proprietor with Grecian arts and Asiatic treasures; and the houses

and gardens of Lucullus obtained a distinguished rank in the list of

Imperial palaces. When the Vandals became formidable to the sea-coast,

the Lucullan villa, on the promontory of Misenum, gradually assumed the

strength and appellation of a strong castle, the obscure retreat of

the last emperor of the West. About twenty years after that great

revolution, it was converted into a church and monastery, to receive

the bones of St. Severinus. They securely reposed, amidst the broken

trophies of Cimbric and Armenian victories, till the beginning of the

tenth century; when the fortifications, which might afford a dangerous

shelter to the Saracens, were demolished by the people of Naples.

Odoacer was the first Barbarian who reigned in Italy, over a people who

had once asserted their just superiority above the rest of mankind. The

disgrace of the Romans still excites our respectful compassion, and

we fondly sympathize with the imaginary grief and indignation of their

degenerate posterity. But the calamities of Italy had gradually subdued

the proud consciousness of freedom and glory. In the age of Roman virtue

the provinces were subject to the arms, and the citizens to the laws, of

the republic; till those laws were subverted by civil discord, and both

the city and the province became the servile property of a tyrant. The

forms of the constitution, which alleviated or disguised their abject

slavery, were abolished by time and violence; the Italians alternately

lamented the presence or the absence of the sovereign, whom they

detested or despised; and the succession of five centuries inflicted the

various evils of military license, capricious despotism, and elaborate

oppression. During the same period, the Barbarians had emerged from

obscurity and contempt, and the warriors of Germany and Scythia were

introduced into the provinces, as the servants, the allies, and at

length the masters, of the Romans, whom they insulted or protected. The

hatred of the people was suppressed by fear; they respected the spirit

and splendor of the martial chiefs who were invested with the honors of

the empire; and the fate of Rome had long depended on the sword of those

formidable strangers. The stern Ricimer, who trampled on the ruins of

Italy, had exercised the power, without assuming the title, of a king;

and the patient Romans were insensibly prepared to acknowledge the

royalty of Odoacer and his Barbaric successors.

The king of Italy was not unworthy of the high station to which his

valor and fortune had exalted him: his savage manners were polished by

the habits of conversation; and he respected, though a conqueror and a

Barbarian, the institutions, and even the prejudices, of his subjects.

After an interval of seven years, Odoacer restored the consulship of the

West. For himself, he modestly, or proudly, declined an honor which was

still accepted by the emperors of the East; but the curule chair was

successively filled by eleven of the most illustrious senators; and

the list is adorned by the respectable name of Basilius, whose virtues

claimed the friendship and grateful applause of Sidonius, his client.

The laws of the emperors were strictly enforced, and the civil

administration of Italy was still exercised by the Prætorian præfect

and his subordinate officers. Odoacer devolved on the Roman magistrates

the odious and oppressive task of collecting the public revenue; but

he reserved for himself the merit of seasonable and popular indulgence.

Like the rest of the Barbarians, he had been instructed in the Arian

heresy; but he revered the monastic and episcopal characters; and the

silence of the Catholics attest the toleration which they enjoyed. The

peace of the city required the interposition of his præfect Basilius

in the choice of a Roman pontiff: the decree which restrained the clergy

from alienating their lands was ultimately designed for the benefit

of the people, whose devotions would have been taxed to repair the

dilapidations of the church. Italy was protected by the arms of its

conqueror; and its frontiers were respected by the Barbarians of Gaul

and Germany, who had so long insulted the feeble race of Theodosius.

Odoacer passed the Adriatic, to chastise the assassins of the emperor

Nepos, and to acquire the maritime province of Dalmatia. He passed the

Alps, to rescue the remains of Noricum from Fava, or Feletheus, king

of the Rugians, who held his residence beyond the Danube. The king

was vanquished in battle, and led away prisoner; a numerous colony of

captives and subjects was transplanted into Italy; and Rome, after

a long period of defeat and disgrace, might claim the triumph of her

Barbarian master.

Notwithstanding the prudence and success of Odoacer, his kingdom

exhibited the sad prospect of misery and desolation. Since the age of

Tiberius, the decay of agriculture had been felt in Italy; and it was a

just subject of complaint, that the life of the Roman people depended on

the accidents of the winds and waves. In the division and the decline of

the empire, the tributary harvests of Egypt and Africa were withdrawn;

the numbers of the inhabitants continually diminished with the means of

subsistence; and the country was exhausted by the irretrievable losses

of war, famine, and pestilence. St. Ambrose has deplored the ruin of

a populous district, which had been once adorned with the flourishing

cities of Bologna, Modena, Regium, and Placentia. Pope Gelasius was a

subject of Odoacer; and he affirms, with strong exaggeration, that in

Æmilia, Tuscany, and the adjacent provinces, the human species was

almost extirpated. The plebeians of Rome, who were fed by the hand of

their master, perished or disappeared, as soon as his liberality was

suppressed; the decline of the arts reduced the industrious mechanic to

idleness and want; and the senators, who might support with patience the

ruin of their country, bewailed their private loss of wealth and luxury. One third of those ample estates, to which the ruin of Italy is

originally imputed, was extorted for the use of the conquerors.

Injuries were aggravated by insults; the sense of actual sufferings was

imbittered by the fear of more dreadful evils; and as new lands were

allotted to the new swarms of Barbarians, each senator was apprehensive

lest the arbitrary surveyors should approach his favorite villa, or his

most profitable farm. The least unfortunate were those who submitted

without a murmur to the power which it was impossible to resist. Since

they desired to live, they owed some gratitude to the tyrant who had

spared their lives; and since he was the absolute master of their

fortunes, the portion which he left must be accepted as his pure and

voluntary gift. The distress of Italy was mitigated by the prudence

and humanity of Odoacer, who had bound himself, as the price of

his elevation, to satisfy the demands of a licentious and turbulent

multitude. The kings of the Barbarians were frequently resisted,

deposed, or murdered, by their native subjects, and the various bands

of Italian mercenaries, who associated under the standard of an elective

general, claimed a larger privilege of freedom and rapine. A monarchy

destitute of national union, and hereditary right, hastened to its

dissolution. After a reign of fourteen years, Odoacer was oppressed by

the superior genius of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths; a hero alike

excellent in the arts of war and of government, who restored an age

of peace and prosperity, and whose name still excites and deserves the

attention of mankind.

Chapter XXXVII: Conversion Of The Barbarians To Christianity.—Part I.

Origin Progress, And Effects Of The Monastic Life.—

Conversion Of The Barbarians To Christianity And Arianism.—

Persecution Of The Vandals In Africa.—Extinction Of

Arianism Among The Barbarians.

The indissoluble connection of civil and ecclesiastical affairs has

compelled, and encouraged, me to relate the progress, the persecutions,

the establishment, the divisions, the final triumph, and the gradual

corruption, of Christianity. I have purposely delayed the consideration

of two religious events, interesting in the study of human nature,

and important in the decline and fall of the Roman empire. I. The

institution of the monastic life; and, II. The conversion of the

northern Barbarians.

I. Prosperity and peace introduced the distinction of the vulgar and

the Ascetic Christians. The loose and imperfect practice of religion

satisfied the conscience of the multitude. The prince or magistrate, the

soldier or merchant, reconciled their fervent zeal, and implicit faith,

with the exercise of their profession, the pursuit of their interest,

and the indulgence of their passions: but the Ascetics, who obeyed and

abused the rigid precepts of the gospel, were inspired by the savage

enthusiasm which represents man as a criminal, and God as a tyrant. They

seriously renounced the business, and the pleasures, of the age; abjured

the use of wine, of flesh, and of marriage; chastised their body,

mortified their affections, and embraced a life of misery, as the price

of eternal happiness. In the reign of Constantine, the Ascetics fled

from a profane and degenerate world, to perpetual solitude, or religious

society. Like the first Christians of Jerusalem, they resigned the

use, or the property of their temporal possessions; established regular

communities of the same sex, and a similar disposition; and assumed

the names of Hermits, Monks, and Anachorets, expressive of their lonely

retreat in a natural or artificial desert. They soon acquired the

respect of the world, which they despised; and the loudest applause was

bestowed on this Divine Philosophy, which surpassed, without the aid

of science or reason, the laborious virtues of the Grecian schools. The

monks might indeed contend with the Stoics, in the contempt of fortune,

of pain, and of death: the Pythagorean silence and submission were

revived in their servile discipline; and they disdained, as firmly as

the Cynics themselves, all the forms and decencies of civil society. But

the votaries of this Divine Philosophy aspired to imitate a purer and

more perfect model. They trod in the footsteps of the prophets, who had

retired to the desert; and they restored the devout and contemplative

life, which had been instituted by the Essenians, in Palestine and

Egypt. The philosophic eye of Pliny had surveyed with astonishment a

solitary people, who dwelt among the palm-trees near the Dead Sea; who

subsisted without money, who were propagated without women; and who

derived from the disgust and repentance of mankind a perpetual supply of

voluntary associates.

Egypt, the fruitful parent of superstition, afforded the first example

of the monastic life. Antony, an illiterate youth of the lower parts of

Thebais, distributed his patrimony, deserted his family and native home,

and executed his monastic penance with original and intrepid fanaticism.

After a long and painful novitiate, among the tombs, and in a ruined

tower, he boldly advanced into the desert three days' journey to the

eastward of the Nile; discovered a lonely spot, which possessed the

advantages of shade and water, and fixed his last residence on Mount

Colzim, near the Red Sea; where an ancient monastery still preserves

the name and memory of the saint. The curious devotion of the Christians

pursued him to the desert; and when he was obliged to appear at

Alexandria, in the face of mankind, he supported his fame with

discretion and dignity. He enjoyed the friendship of Athanasius, whose

doctrine he approved; and the Egyptian peasant respectfully declined

a respectful invitation from the emperor Constantine. The venerable

patriarch (for Antony attained the age of one hundred and five years)

beheld the numerous progeny which had been formed by his example and his

lessons. The prolific colonies of monks multiplied with rapid increase

on the sands of Libya, upon the rocks of Thebais, and in the cities of

the Nile. To the south of Alexandria, the mountain, and adjacent desert,

of Nitria, were peopled by five thousand anachorets; and the traveller

may still investigate the ruins of fifty monasteries, which were planted

in that barren soil by the disciples of Antony. In the Upper Thebais,

the vacant island of Tabenne, was occupied by Pachomius and fourteen

hundred of his brethren. That holy abbot successively founded nine

monasteries of men, and one of women; and the festival of Easter

sometimes collected fifty thousand religious persons, who followed his

angelic rule of discipline. The stately and populous city of Oxyrinchus,

the seat of Christian orthodoxy, had devoted the temples, the public

edifices, and even the ramparts, to pious and charitable uses; and

the bishop, who might preach in twelve churches, computed ten thousand

females and twenty thousand males, of the monastic profession. The

Egyptians, who gloried in this marvellous revolution, were disposed

to hope, and to believe, that the number of the monks was equal to the

remainder of the people; and posterity might repeat the saying, which

had formerly been applied to the sacred animals of the same country,

That in Egypt it was less difficult to find a god than a man.

Athanasius introduced into Rome the knowledge and practice of the

monastic life; and a school of this new philosophy was opened by the

disciples of Antony, who accompanied their primate to the holy threshold

of the Vatican. The strange and savage appearance of these Egyptians

excited, at first, horror and contempt, and, at length, applause and

zealous imitation. The senators, and more especially the matrons,

transformed their palaces and villas into religious houses; and

the narrow institution of six Vestals was eclipsed by the frequent

monasteries, which were seated on the ruins of ancient temples, and

in the midst of the Roman forum. Inflamed by the example of Antony, a

Syrian youth, whose name was Hilarion, fixed his dreary abode on a sandy

beach, between the sea and a morass, about seven miles from Gaza. The

austere penance, in which he persisted forty-eight years, diffused a

similar enthusiasm; and the holy man was followed by a train of two

or three thousand anachorets, whenever he visited the innumerable

monasteries of Palestine. The fame of Basil is immortal in the monastic

history of the East. With a mind that had tasted the learning and

eloquence of Athens; with an ambition scarcely to be satisfied with the

archbishopric of Cæsarea, Basil retired to a savage solitude in Pontus;

and deigned, for a while, to give laws to the spiritual colonies which

he profusely scattered along the coast of the Black Sea. In the West,

Martin of Tours, a soldier, a hermit, a bishop, and a saint, established

the monasteries of Gaul; two thousand of his disciples followed him to

the grave; and his eloquent historian challenges the deserts of Thebais

to produce, in a more favorable climate, a champion of equal virtue.

The progress of the monks was not less rapid, or universal, than that

of Christianity itself. Every province, and, at last, every city, of the

empire, was filled with their increasing multitudes; and the bleak and

barren isles, from Lerins to Lipari, that arose out of the Tuscan Sea,

were chosen by the anachorets for the place of their voluntary exile. An

easy and perpetual intercourse by sea and land connected the provinces

of the Roman world; and the life of Hilarion displays the facility with

which an indigent hermit of Palestine might traverse Egypt, embark for

Sicily, escape to Epirus, and finally settle in the Island of Cyprus.

The Latin Christians embraced the religious institutions of Rome. The

pilgrims, who visited Jerusalem, eagerly copied, in the most distant

climates of the earth, the faithful model of the monastic life. The

disciples of Antony spread themselves beyond the tropic, over the

Christian empire of Æthiopia. The monastery of Banchor, in Flintshire,

which contained above two thousand brethren, dispersed a numerous colony

among the Barbarians of Ireland; and Iona, one of the Hebrides, which

was planted by the Irish monks, diffused over the northern regions a

doubtful ray of science and superstition.

These unhappy exiles from social life were impelled by the dark and

implacable genius of superstition. Their mutual resolution was supported

by the example of millions, of either sex, of every age, and of every

rank; and each proselyte who entered the gates of a monastery, was

persuaded that he trod the steep and thorny path of eternal happiness.

But the operation of these religious motives was variously determined

by the temper and situation of mankind. Reason might subdue, or passion

might suspend, their influence: but they acted most forcibly on the

infirm minds of children and females; they were strengthened by secret

remorse, or accidental misfortune; and they might derive some aid from

the temporal considerations of vanity or interest. It was naturally

supposed, that the pious and humble monks, who had renounced the world

to accomplish the work of their salvation, were the best qualified for

the spiritual government of the Christians. The reluctant hermit was

torn from his cell, and seated, amidst the acclamations of the people,

on the episcopal throne: the monasteries of Egypt, of Gaul, and of the

East, supplied a regular succession of saints and bishops; and ambition

soon discovered the secret road which led to the possession of wealth

and honors. The popular monks, whose reputation was connected with

the fame and success of the order, assiduously labored to multiply the

number of their fellow-captives. They insinuated themselves into noble

and opulent families; and the specious arts of flattery and seduction

were employed to secure those proselytes who might bestow wealth or

dignity on the monastic profession. The indignant father bewailed the

loss, perhaps, of an only son; the credulous maid was betrayed by vanity

to violate the laws of nature; and the matron aspired to imaginary

perfection, by renouncing the virtues of domestic life. Paula yielded

to the persuasive eloquence of Jerom; and the profane title of

mother-in-law of God tempted that illustrious widow to consecrate the

virginity of her daughter Eustochium. By the advice, and in the company,

of her spiritual guide, Paula abandoned Rome and her infant son; retired

to the holy village of Bethlem; founded a hospital and four monasteries;

and acquired, by her alms and penance, an eminent and conspicuous

station in the Catholic church. Such rare and illustrious penitents were

celebrated as the glory and example of their age; but the monasteries

were filled by a crowd of obscure and abject plebeians, who gained in

the cloister much more than they had sacrificed in the world. Peasants,

slaves, and mechanics, might escape from poverty and contempt to a safe

and honorable profession; whose apparent hardships are mitigated by

custom, by popular applause, and by the secret relaxation of discipline.

The subjects of Rome, whose persons and fortunes were made responsible

for unequal and exorbitant tributes, retired from the oppression of the

Imperial government; and the pusillanimous youth preferred the penance

of a monastic, to the dangers of a military, life. The affrighted

provincials of every rank, who fled before the Barbarians, found

shelter and subsistence: whole legions were buried in these religious

sanctuaries; and the same cause, which relieved the distress of

individuals, impaired the strength and fortitude of the empire.

The monastic profession of the ancients was an act of voluntary

devotion. The inconstant fanatic was threatened with the eternal

vengeance of the God whom he deserted; but the doors of the monastery

were still open for repentance. Those monks, whose conscience was

fortified by reason or passion, were at liberty to resume the character

of men and citizens; and even the spouses of Christ might accept the

legal embraces of an earthly lover. The examples of scandal, and the

progress of superstition, suggested the propriety of more forcible

restraints. After a sufficient trial, the fidelity of the novice was

secured by a solemn and perpetual vow; and his irrevocable engagement

was ratified by the laws of the church and state. A guilty fugitive

was pursued, arrested, and restored to his perpetual prison; and the

interposition of the magistrate oppressed the freedom and the merit,

which had alleviated, in some degree, the abject slavery of the monastic

discipline. The actions of a monk, his words, and even his thoughts,

were determined by an inflexible rule, or a capricious superior:

the slightest offences were corrected by disgrace or confinement,

extraordinary fasts, or bloody flagellation; and disobedience, murmur,

or delay, were ranked in the catalogue of the most heinous sins. A

blind submission to the commands of the abbot, however absurd, or even

criminal, they might seem, was the ruling principle, the first virtue of

the Egyptian monks; and their patience was frequently exercised by the

most extravagant trials. They were directed to remove an enormous rock;

assiduously to water a barren staff, that was planted in the ground,

till, at the end of three years, it should vegetate and blossom like a

tree; to walk into a fiery furnace; or to cast their infant into a deep

pond: and several saints, or madmen, have been immortalized in monastic

story, by their thoughtless and fearless obedience. The freedom of the

mind, the source of every generous and rational sentiment, was destroyed

by the habits of credulity and submission; and the monk, contracting

the vices of a slave, devoutly followed the faith and passions of his

ecclesiastical tyrant. The peace of the Eastern church was invaded by

a swarm of fanatics, incapable of fear, or reason, or humanity; and the

Imperial troops acknowledged, without shame, that they were much less

apprehensive of an encounter with the fiercest Barbarians.

Superstition has often framed and consecrated the fantastic garments of

the monks: but their apparent singularity sometimes proceeds from

their uniform attachment to a simple and primitive model, which the

revolutions of fashion have made ridiculous in the eyes of mankind. The

father of the Benedictines expressly disclaims all idea of choice

of merit; and soberly exhorts his disciples to adopt the coarse and

convenient dress of the countries which they may inhabit. The monastic

habits of the ancients varied with the climate, and their mode of life;

and they assumed, with the same indifference, the sheep-skin of the

Egyptian peasants, or the cloak of the Grecian philosophers. They

allowed themselves the use of linen in Egypt, where it was a cheap and

domestic manufacture; but in the West they rejected such an expensive

article of foreign luxury. It was the practice of the monks either to

cut or shave their hair; they wrapped their heads in a cowl to escape

the sight of profane objects; their legs and feet were naked, except

in the extreme cold of winter; and their slow and feeble steps were

supported by a long staff. The aspect of a genuine anachoret was horrid

and disgusting: every sensation that is offensive to man was thought

acceptable to God; and the angelic rule of Tabenne condemned the

salutary custom of bathing the limbs in water, and of anointing them

with oil. The austere monks slept on the ground, on a hard mat, or a

rough blanket; and the same bundle of palm-leaves served them as a seat

in the lay, and a pillow in the night. Their original cells were low,

narrow huts, built of the slightest materials; which formed, by the

regular distribution of the streets, a large and populous village,

enclosing, within the common wall, a church, a hospital, perhaps a

library, some necessary offices, a garden, and a fountain or reservoir

of fresh water. Thirty or forty brethren composed a family of separate

discipline and diet; and the great monasteries of Egypt consisted of

thirty or forty families.

Chapter XXXVII: Conversion Of The Barbarians To Christianity.—Part II.

Pleasure and guilt are synonymous terms in the language of the monks,

and they discovered, by experience, that rigid fasts, and abstemious

diet, are the most effectual preservatives against the impure desires

of the flesh. The rules of abstinence which they imposed, or practised,

were not uniform or perpetual: the cheerful festival of the Pentecost

was balanced by the extraordinary mortification of Lent; the fervor of

new monasteries was insensibly relaxed; and the voracious appetite of

the Gauls could not imitate the patient and temperate virtue of the

Egyptians. The disciples of Antony and Pachomius were satisfied with

their daily pittance, of twelve ounces of bread, or rather biscuit,

which they divided into two frugal repasts, of the afternoon and of the

evening. It was esteemed a merit, and almost a duty, to abstain from

the boiled vegetables which were provided for the refectory; but the

extraordinary bounty of the abbot sometimes indulged them with the

luxury of cheese, fruit, salad, and the small dried fish of the Nile.

A more ample latitude of sea and river fish was gradually allowed

or assumed; but the use of flesh was long confined to the sick

or travellers; and when it gradually prevailed in the less rigid

monasteries of Europe, a singular distinction was introduced; as if

birds, whether wild or domestic, had been less profane than the grosser

animals of the field. Water was the pure and innocent beverage of the

primitive monks; and the founder of the Benedictines regrets the daily

portion of half a pint of wine, which had been extorted from him by the

intemperance of the age. Such an allowance might be easily supplied by

the vineyards of Italy; and his victorious disciples, who passed the

Alps, the Rhine, and the Baltic, required, in the place of wine, an

adequate compensation of strong beer or cider.

The candidate who aspired to the virtue of evangelical poverty, abjured,

at his first entrance into a regular community, the idea, and even

the name, of all separate or exclusive possessions. The brethren were

supported by their manual labor; and the duty of labor was strenuously

recommended as a penance, as an exercise, and as the most laudable means

of securing their daily subsistence. The garden and fields, which the

industry of the monks had often rescued from the forest or the morass,

were diligently cultivated by their hands. They performed, without

reluctance, the menial offices of slaves and domestics; and the several

trades that were necessary to provide their habits, their utensils,

and their lodging, were exercised within the precincts of the great

monasteries. The monastic studies have tended, for the most part,

to darken, rather than to dispel, the cloud of superstition. Yet

the curiosity or zeal of some learned solitaries has cultivated the

ecclesiastical, and even the profane, sciences; and posterity must

gratefully acknowledge, that the monuments of Greek and Roman literature

have been preserved and multiplied by their indefatigable pens. But the

more humble industry of the monks, especially in Egypt, was contented

with the silent, sedentary occupation of making wooden sandals, or

of twisting the leaves of the palm-tree into mats and baskets. The

superfluous stock, which was not consumed in domestic use, supplied, by

trade, the wants of the community: the boats of Tabenne, and the other

monasteries of Thebais, descended the Nile as far as Alexandria; and,

in a Christian market, the sanctity of the workmen might enhance the

intrinsic value of the work.

But the necessity of manual labor was insensibly superseded. The novice

was tempted to bestow his fortune on the saints, in whose society he

was resolved to spend the remainder of his life; and the pernicious

indulgence of the laws permitted him to receive, for their use, any

future accessions of legacy or inheritance. Melania contributed her

plate, three hundred pounds weight of silver; and Paula contracted

an immense debt, for the relief of their favorite monks; who kindly

imparted the merits of their prayers and penance to a rich and liberal

sinner. Time continually increased, and accidents could seldom diminish,

the estates of the popular monasteries, which spread over the adjacent

country and cities: and, in the first century of their institution, the

infidel Zosimus has maliciously observed, that, for the benefit of the

poor, the Christian monks had reduced a great part of mankind to a

state of beggary. As long as they maintained their original fervor, they

approved themselves, however, the faithful and benevolent stewards of

the charity, which was entrusted to their care. But their discipline was

corrupted by prosperity: they gradually assumed the pride of wealth,

and at last indulged the luxury of expense. Their public luxury might be

excused by the magnificence of religious worship, and the decent motive

of erecting durable habitations for an immortal society. But every age

of the church has accused the licentiousness of the degenerate monks;

who no longer remembered the object of their institution, embraced the

vain and sensual pleasures of the world, which they had renounced, and

scandalously abused the riches which had been acquired by the austere

virtues of their founders. Their natural descent, from such painful and

dangerous virtue, to the common vices of humanity, will not, perhaps,

excite much grief or indignation in the mind of a philosopher.

The lives of the primitive monks were consumed in penance and solitude;

undisturbed by the various occupations which fill the time, and exercise

the faculties, of reasonable, active, and social beings. Whenever

they were permitted to step beyond the precincts of the monastery, two

jealous companions were the mutual guards and spies of each other's

actions; and, after their return, they were condemned to forget, or,

at least, to suppress, whatever they had seen or heard in the world.

Strangers, who professed the orthodox faith, were hospitably entertained

in a separate apartment; but their dangerous conversation was restricted

to some chosen elders of approved discretion and fidelity. Except in

their presence, the monastic slave might not receive the visits of

his friends or kindred; and it was deemed highly meritorious, if he

afflicted a tender sister, or an aged parent, by the obstinate refusal

of a word or look. The monks themselves passed their lives, without

personal attachments, among a crowd which had been formed by accident,

and was detained, in the same prison, by force or prejudice. Recluse

fanatics have few ideas or sentiments to communicate: a special license

of the abbot regulated the time and duration of their familiar visits;

and, at their silent meals, they were enveloped in their cowls,

inaccessible, and almost invisible, to each other. Study is the resource

of solitude: but education had not prepared and qualified for any

liberal studies the mechanics and peasants who filled the monastic

communities. They might work: but the vanity of spiritual perfection was

tempted to disdain the exercise of manual labor; and the industry must

be faint and languid, which is not excited by the sense of personal

interest.

According to their faith and zeal, they might employ the day, which they

passed in their cells, either in vocal or mental prayer: they assembled

in the evening, and they were awakened in the night, for the public

worship of the monastery. The precise moment was determined by the

stars, which are seldom clouded in the serene sky of Egypt; and a rustic

horn, or trumpet, the signal of devotion, twice interrupted the vast

silence of the desert. Even sleep, the last refuge of the unhappy, was

rigorously measured: the vacant hours of the monk heavily rolled along,

without business or pleasure; and, before the close of each day, he had

repeatedly accused the tedious progress of the sun. In this comfortless

state, superstition still pursued and tormented her wretched votaries.

The repose which they had sought in the cloister was disturbed by a

tardy repentance, profane doubts, and guilty desires; and, while they

considered each natural impulse as an unpardonable sin, they perpetually

trembled on the edge of a flaming and bottomless abyss. From the painful

struggles of disease and despair, these unhappy victims were sometimes

relieved by madness or death; and, in the sixth century, a hospital was

founded at Jerusalem for a small portion of the austere penitents, who

were deprived of their senses. Their visions, before they attained this

extreme and acknowledged term of frenzy, have afforded ample materials

of supernatural history. It was their firm persuasion, that the

air, which they breathed, was peopled with invisible enemies; with

innumerable demons, who watched every occasion, and assumed every

form, to terrify, and above all to tempt, their unguarded virtue. The

imagination, and even the senses, were deceived by the illusions of

distempered fanaticism; and the hermit, whose midnight prayer was

oppressed by involuntary slumber, might easily confound the phantoms

of horror or delight, which had occupied his sleeping and his waking

dreams.

The monks were divided into two classes: the Cœnobites, who lived under

a common and regular discipline; and the Anachorets, who indulged

their unsocial, independent fanaticism. The most devout, or the most

ambitious, of the spiritual brethren, renounced the convent, as they had

renounced the world. The fervent monasteries of Egypt, Palestine, and

Syria, were surrounded by a Laura, a distant circle of solitary cells;

and the extravagant penance of Hermits was stimulated by applause and

emulation. They sunk under the painful weight of crosses and chains; and

their emaciated limbs were confined by collars, bracelets, gauntlets,

and greaves of massy and rigid iron. All superfluous encumbrance of

dress they contemptuously cast away; and some savage saints of both

sexes have been admired, whose naked bodies were only covered by their

long hair. They aspired to reduce themselves to the rude and miserable

state in which the human brute is scarcely distinguishable above his

kindred animals; and the numerous sect of Anachorets derived their name

from their humble practice of grazing in the fields of Mesopotamia with

the common herd. They often usurped the den of some wild beast whom

they affected to resemble; they buried themselves in some gloomy cavern,

which art or nature had scooped out of the rock; and the marble quarries

of Thebais are still inscribed with the monuments of their penance. The

most perfect Hermits are supposed to have passed many days without food,

many nights without sleep, and many years without speaking; and glorious

was the man ( I abuse that name) who contrived any cell, or seat, of a

peculiar construction, which might expose him, in the most inconvenient

posture, to the inclemency of the seasons.

Among these heroes of the monastic life, the name and genius of Simeon

Stylites have been immortalized by the singular invention of an

aërial penance. At the age of thirteen, the young Syrian deserted the

profession of a shepherd, and threw himself into an austere monastery.

After a long and painful novitiate, in which Simeon was repeatedly saved

from pious suicide, he established his residence on a mountain, about

thirty or forty miles to the east of Antioch. Within the space of a

mandra, or circle of stones, to which he had attached himself by a

ponderous chain, he ascended a column, which was successively raised

from the height of nine, to that of sixty, feet from the ground. In this

last and lofty station, the Syrian Anachoret resisted the heat of thirty

summers, and the cold of as many winters. Habit and exercise instructed

him to maintain his dangerous situation without fear or giddiness, and

successively to assume the different postures of devotion. He sometimes

prayed in an erect attitude, with his outstretched arms in the figure of

a cross, but his most familiar practice was that of bending his meagre

skeleton from the forehead to the feet; and a curious spectator, after

numbering twelve hundred and forty-four repetitions, at length desisted

from the endless account. The progress of an ulcer in his thigh might

shorten, but it could not disturb, this celestial life; and the patient

Hermit expired, without descending from his column. A prince, who should

capriciously inflict such tortures, would be deemed a tyrant; but it

would surpass the power of a tyrant to impose a long and miserable

existence on the reluctant victims of his cruelty. This voluntary

martyrdom must have gradually destroyed the sensibility both of the

mind and body; nor can it be presumed that the fanatics, who torment

themselves, are susceptible of any lively affection for the rest of

mankind. A cruel, unfeeling temper has distinguished the monks of every

age and country: their stern indifference, which is seldom mollified

by personal friendship, is inflamed by religious hatred; and their

merciless zeal has strenuously administered the holy office of the

Inquisition.

The monastic saints, who excite only the contempt and pity of a

philosopher, were respected, and almost adored, by the prince and

people. Successive crowds of pilgrims from Gaul and India saluted the

divine pillar of Simeon: the tribes of Saracens disputed in arms the

honor of his benediction; the queens of Arabia and Persia gratefully

confessed his supernatural virtue; and the angelic Hermit was consulted

by the younger Theodosius, in the most important concerns of the church

and state. His remains were transported from the mountain of Telenissa,

by a solemn procession of the patriarch, the master-general of the East,

six bishops, twenty-one counts or tribunes, and six thousand soldiers;

and Antioch revered his bones, as her glorious ornament and impregnable

defence. The fame of the apostles and martyrs was gradually eclipsed by

these recent and popular Anachorets; the Christian world fell prostrate

before their shrines; and the miracles ascribed to their relics

exceeded, at least in number and duration, the spiritual exploits of

their lives. But the golden legend of their lives was embellished by the

artful credulity of their interested brethren; and a believing age was

easily persuaded, that the slightest caprice of an Egyptian or a Syrian

monk had been sufficient to interrupt the eternal laws of the universe.

The favorites of Heaven were accustomed to cure inveterate diseases with

a touch, a word, or a distant message; and to expel the most obstinate

demons from the souls or bodies which they possessed. They familiarly

accosted, or imperiously commanded, the lions and serpents of the

desert; infused vegetation into a sapless trunk; suspended iron on the

surface of the water; passed the Nile on the back of a crocodile, and

refreshed themselves in a fiery furnace. These extravagant tales,

which display the fiction without the genius, of poetry, have seriously

affected the reason, the faith, and the morals, of the Christians. Their

credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of the mind: they corrupted

the evidence of history; and superstition gradually extinguished the

hostile light of philosophy and science. Every mode of religious worship

which had been practised by the saints, every mysterious doctrine which

they believed, was fortified by the sanction of divine revelation, and

all the manly virtues were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous

reign of the monks. If it be possible to measure the interval between

the philosophic writings of Cicero and the sacred legend of Theodoret,

between the character of Cato and that of Simeon, we may appreciate the

memorable revolution which was accomplished in the Roman empire within a

period of five hundred years.

II. The progress of Christianity has been marked by two glorious and

decisive victories: over the learned and luxurious citizens of the Roman

empire; and over the warlike Barbarians of Scythia and Germany, who

subverted the empire, and embraced the religion, of the Romans. The

Goths were the foremost of these savage proselytes; and the nation was

indebted for its conversion to a countryman, or, at least, to a subject,

worthy to be ranked among the inventors of useful arts, who have

deserved the remembrance and gratitude of posterity. A great number of

Roman provincials had been led away into captivity by the Gothic bands,

who ravaged Asia in the time of Gallienus; and of these captives, many

were Christians, and several belonged to the ecclesiastical order. Those

involuntary missionaries, dispersed as slaves in the villages of Dacia,

successively labored for the salvation of their masters. The seeds which

they planted, of the evangelic doctrine, were gradually propagated; and

before the end of a century, the pious work was achieved by the labors

of Ulphilas, whose ancestors had been transported beyond the Danube from

a small town of Cappadocia.

Ulphilas, the bishop and apostle of the Goths, acquired their love

and reverence by his blameless life and indefatigable zeal; and they

received, with implicit confidence, the doctrines of truth and virtue

which he preached and practised. He executed the arduous task of

translating the Scriptures into their native tongue, a dialect of the

German or Teutonic language; but he prudently suppressed the four books

of Kings, as they might tend to irritate the fierce and sanguinary

spirit of the Barbarians. The rude, imperfect idiom of soldiers and

shepherds, so ill qualified to communicate any spiritual ideas, was

improved and modulated by his genius: and Ulphilas, before he could

frame his version, was obliged to compose a new alphabet of twenty-four

letters; four of which he invented, to express the peculiar sounds that

were unknown to the Greek and Latin pronunciation. But the prosperous

state of the Gothic church was soon afflicted by war and intestine

discord, and the chieftains were divided by religion as well as by

interest. Fritigern, the friend of the Romans, became the proselyte of

Ulphilas; while the haughty soul of Athanaric disdained the yoke of the

empire and of the gospel The faith of the new converts was tried by the

persecution which he excited. A wagon, bearing aloft the shapeless

image of Thor, perhaps, or of Woden, was conducted in solemn procession

through the streets of the camp; and the rebels, who refused to worship

the god of their fathers, were immediately burnt, with their tents and

families. The character of Ulphilas recommended him to the esteem of

the Eastern court, where he twice appeared as the minister of peace; he

pleaded the cause of the distressed Goths, who implored the protection

of Valens; and the name of Moses was applied to this spiritual guide,

who conducted his people through the deep waters of the Danube to the

Land of Promise. The devout shepherds, who were attached to his person,

and tractable to his voice, acquiesced in their settlement, at the foot

of the Mæsian mountains, in a country of woodlands and pastures, which

supported their flocks and herds, and enabled them to purchase the corn

and wine of the more plentiful provinces. These harmless Barbarians

multiplied in obscure peace and the profession of Christianity.

Their fiercer brethren, the formidable Visigoths, universally adopted

the religion of the Romans, with whom they maintained a perpetual

intercourse, of war, of friendship, or of conquest. In their long and

victorious march from the Danube to the Atlantic Ocean, they converted

their allies; they educated the rising generation; and the devotion

which reigned in the camp of Alaric, or the court of Thoulouse, might

edify or disgrace the palaces of Rome and Constantinople. During the

same period, Christianity was embraced by almost all the Barbarians,

who established their kingdoms on the ruins of the Western empire; the

Burgundians in Gaul, the Suevi in Spain, the Vandals in Africa, the

Ostrogoths in Pannonia, and the various bands of mercenaries, that

raised Odoacer to the throne of Italy. The Franks and the Saxons still

persevered in the errors of Paganism; but the Franks obtained the

monarchy of Gaul by their submission to the example of Clovis; and

the Saxon conquerors of Britain were reclaimed from their savage

superstition by the missionaries of Rome. These Barbarian proselytes

displayed an ardent and successful zeal in the propagation of the faith.

The Merovingian kings, and their successors, Charlemagne and the Othos,

extended, by their laws and victories, the dominion of the cross.

England produced the apostle of Germany; and the evangelic light was

gradually diffused from the neighborhood of the Rhine, to the nations of

the Elbe, the Vistula, and the Baltic.

Chapter XXXVII: Conversion Of The Barbarians To Christianity.—Part

III.

The different motives which influenced the reason, or the passions, of

the Barbarian converts, cannot easily be ascertained. They were often

capricious and accidental; a dream, an omen, the report of a miracle,

the example of some priest, or hero, the charms of a believing wife,

and, above all, the fortunate event of a prayer, or vow, which, in a

moment of danger, they had addressed to the God of the Christians. The

early prejudices of education were insensibly erased by the habits of

frequent and familiar society, the moral precepts of the gospel were

protected by the extravagant virtues of the monks; and a spiritual

theology was supported by the visible power of relics, and the pomp of

religious worship. But the rational and ingenious mode of persuasion,

which a Saxon bishop suggested to a popular saint, might sometimes

be employed by the missionaries, who labored for the conversion of

infidels. "Admit," says the sagacious disputant, "whatever they are

pleased to assert of the fabulous, and carnal, genealogy of their gods

and goddesses, who are propagated from each other. From this principle

deduce their imperfect nature, and human infirmities, the assurance they

were born, and the probability that they will die. At what time, by

what means, from what cause, were the eldest of the gods or goddesses

produced? Do they still continue, or have they ceased, to propagate? If

they have ceased, summon your antagonists to declare the reason of this

strange alteration. If they still continue, the number of the gods must

become infinite; and shall we not risk, by the indiscreet worship of

some impotent deity, to excite the resentment of his jealous superior?

The visible heavens and earth, the whole system of the universe, which

may be conceived by the mind, is it created or eternal? If created, how,

or where, could the gods themselves exist before creation? If eternal,

how could they assume the empire of an independent and preexisting

world? Urge these arguments with temper and moderation; insinuate, at

seasonable intervals, the truth and beauty of the Christian revelation;

and endeavor to make the unbelievers ashamed, without making them

angry." This metaphysical reasoning, too refined, perhaps, for the

Barbarians of Germany, was fortified by the grosser weight of authority

and popular consent. The advantage of temporal prosperity had deserted

the Pagan cause, and passed over to the service of Christianity. The

Romans themselves, the most powerful and enlightened nation of the

globe, had renounced their ancient superstition; and, if the ruin

of their empire seemed to accuse the efficacy of the new faith, the

disgrace was already retrieved by the conversion of the victorious

Goths. The valiant and fortunate Barbarians, who subdued the provinces

of the West, successively received, and reflected, the same edifying

example. Before the age of Charlemagne, the Christian nations of Europe

might exult in the exclusive possession of the temperate climates, of

the fertile lands, which produced corn, wine, and oil; while the savage

idolaters, and their helpless idols, were confined to the extremities of

the earth, the dark and frozen regions of the North.

Christianity, which opened the gates of Heaven to the Barbarians,

introduced an important change in their moral and political condition.

They received, at the same time, the use of letters, so essential to a

religion whose doctrines are contained in a sacred book; and while they

studied the divine truth, their minds were insensibly enlarged by the

distant view of history, of nature, of the arts, and of society.

The version of the Scriptures into their native tongue, which had

facilitated their conversion, must excite among their clergy some

curiosity to read the original text, to understand the sacred liturgy of

the church, and to examine, in the writings of the fathers, the chain

of ecclesiastical tradition. These spiritual gifts were preserved in the

Greek and Latin languages, which concealed the inestimable monuments of

ancient learning. The immortal productions of Virgil, Cicero, and Livy,

which were accessible to the Christian Barbarians, maintained a silent

intercourse between the reign of Augustus and the times of Clovis and

Charlemagne. The emulation of mankind was encouraged by the remembrance

of a more perfect state; and the flame of science was secretly kept

alive, to warm and enlighten the mature age of the Western world. In the

most corrupt state of Christianity, the Barbarians might learn justice

from the law, and mercy from the gospel; and if the knowledge of their

duty was insufficient to guide their actions, or to regulate their

passions, they were sometimes restrained by conscience, and frequently

punished by remorse. But the direct authority of religion was less

effectual than the holy communion, which united them with their

Christian brethren in spiritual friendship. The influence of these

sentiments contributed to secure their fidelity in the service, or the

alliance, of the Romans, to alleviate the horrors of war, to moderate

the insolence of conquest, and to preserve, in the downfall of the

empire, a permanent respect for the name and institutions of Rome. In

the days of Paganism, the priests of Gaul and Germany reigned over the

people, and controlled the jurisdiction of the magistrates; and the

zealous proselytes transferred an equal, or more ample, measure of

devout obedience, to the pontiffs of the Christian faith. The sacred

character of the bishops was supported by their temporal possessions;

they obtained an honorable seat in the legislative assemblies of

soldiers and freemen; and it was their interest, as well as their duty,

to mollify, by peaceful counsels, the fierce spirit of the Barbarians.

The perpetual correspondence of the Latin clergy, the frequent

pilgrimages to Rome and Jerusalem, and the growing authority of the

popes, cemented the union of the Christian republic, and gradually

produced the similar manners, and common jurisprudence, which have

distinguished, from the rest of mankind, the independent, and even

hostile, nations of modern Europe.

But the operation of these causes was checked and retarded by the

unfortunate accident, which infused a deadly poison into the cup of

Salvation. Whatever might be the early sentiments of Ulphilas, his

connections with the empire and the church were formed during the reign

of Arianism. The apostle of the Goths subscribed the creed of Rimini;

professed with freedom, and perhaps with sincerity, that the Son was not

equal, or consubstantial to the Father; communicated these errors to the

clergy and people; and infected the Barbaric world with a heresy, which

the great Theodosius proscribed and extinguished among the Romans.

The temper and understanding of the new proselytes were not adapted to

metaphysical subtilties; but they strenuously maintained, what they had

piously received, as the pure and genuine doctrines of Christianity.

The advantage of preaching and expounding the Scriptures in the Teutonic

language promoted the apostolic labors of Ulphilas and his successors;

and they ordained a competent number of bishops and presbyters for the

instruction of the kindred tribes. The Ostrogoths, the Burgundians, the

Suevi, and the Vandals, who had listened to the eloquence of the Latin

clergy, preferred the more intelligible lessons of their domestic

teachers; and Arianism was adopted as the national faith of the warlike

converts, who were seated on the ruins of the Western empire. This

irreconcilable difference of religion was a perpetual source of jealousy

and hatred; and the reproach of Barbarian was imbittered by the more

odious epithet of Heretic. The heroes of the North, who had submitted,

with some reluctance, to believe that all their ancestors were in hell,

were astonished and exasperated to learn, that they themselves had only

changed the mode of their eternal condemnation. Instead of the smooth

applause, which Christian kings are accustomed to expect from their

royal prelates, the orthodox bishops and their clergy were in a state

of opposition to the Arian courts; and their indiscreet opposition

frequently became criminal, and might sometimes be dangerous. The

pulpit, that safe and sacred organ of sedition, resounded with the names

of Pharaoh and Holofernes; the public discontent was inflamed by the

hope or promise of a glorious deliverance; and the seditious saints

were tempted to promote the accomplishment of their own predictions.

Notwithstanding these provocations, the Catholics of Gaul, Spain, and

Italy, enjoyed, under the reign of the Arians, the free and peaceful

exercise of their religion. Their haughty masters respected the zeal of

a numerous people, resolved to die at the foot of their altars; and

the example of their devout constancy was admired and imitated by the

Barbarians themselves. The conquerors evaded, however, the disgraceful

reproach, or confession, of fear, by attributing their toleration to

the liberal motives of reason and humanity; and while they affected

the language, they imperceptibly imbibed the spirit, of genuine

Christianity.

The peace of the church was sometimes interrupted. The Catholics were

indiscreet, the Barbarians were impatient; and the partial acts of

severity or injustice, which had been recommended by the Arian clergy,

were exaggerated by the orthodox writers. The guilt of persecution may

be imputed to Euric, king of the Visigoths; who suspended the exercise

of ecclesiastical, or, at least, of episcopal functions; and punished

the popular bishops of Aquitain with imprisonment, exile, and

confiscation. But the cruel and absurd enterprise of subduing the minds

of a whole people was undertaken by the Vandals alone. Genseric himself,

in his early youth, had renounced the orthodox communion; and the

apostate could neither grant, nor expect, a sincere forgiveness. He was

exasperated to find that the Africans, who had fled before him in the

field, still presumed to dispute his will in synods and churches; and

his ferocious mind was incapable of fear or of compassion. His Catholic

subjects were oppressed by intolerant laws and arbitrary punishments.

The language of Genseric was furious and formidable; the knowledge of

his intentions might justify the most unfavorable interpretation of his

actions; and the Arians were reproached with the frequent executions

which stained the palace and the dominions of the tyrant. Arms and

ambition were, however, the ruling passions of the monarch of the sea.

But Hunneric, his inglorious son, who seemed to inherit only his vices,

tormented the Catholics with the same unrelenting fury which had been

fatal to his brother, his nephews, and the friends and favorites of his

father; and even to the Arian patriarch, who was inhumanly burnt alive

in the midst of Carthage. The religious war was preceded and prepared

by an insidious truce; persecution was made the serious and important

business of the Vandal court; and the loathsome disease which hastened

the death of Hunneric, revenged the injuries, without contributing to

the deliverance, of the church. The throne of Africa was successively

filled by the two nephews of Hunneric; by Gundamund, who reigned about

twelve, and by Thrasimund, who governed the nation about twenty-seven,

years. Their administration was hostile and oppressive to the orthodox

party. Gundamund appeared to emulate, or even to surpass, the cruelty

of his uncle; and, if at length he relented, if he recalled the bishops,

and restored the freedom of Athanasian worship, a premature death

intercepted the benefits of his tardy clemency. His brother, Thrasimund,

was the greatest and most accomplished of the Vandal kings, whom

he excelled in beauty, prudence, and magnanimity of soul. But this

magnanimous character was degraded by his intolerant zeal and deceitful

clemency. Instead of threats and tortures, he employed the gentle, but

efficacious, powers of seduction. Wealth, dignity, and the royal favor,

were the liberal rewards of apostasy; the Catholics, who had violated

the laws, might purchase their pardon by the renunciation of their

faith; and whenever Thrasimund meditated any rigorous measure, he

patiently waited till the indiscretion of his adversaries furnished him

with a specious opportunity. Bigotry was his last sentiment in the hour

of death; and he exacted from his successor a solemn oath, that he would

never tolerate the sectaries of Athanasius. But his successor, Hilderic,

the gentle son of the savage Hunneric, preferred the duties of humanity

and justice to the vain obligation of an impious oath; and his accession

was gloriously marked by the restoration of peace and universal freedom.

The throne of that virtuous, though feeble monarch, was usurped by his

cousin Gelimer, a zealous Arian: but the Vandal kingdom, before he could

enjoy or abuse his power, was subverted by the arms of Belisarius; and

the orthodox party retaliated the injuries which they had endured.

The passionate declamations of the Catholics, the sole historians

of this persecution, cannot afford any distinct series of causes and

events; any impartial view of the characters, or counsels; but the most

remarkable circumstances that deserve either credit or notice, may be

referred to the following heads; I. In the original law, which is still

extant, Hunneric expressly declares, (and the declaration appears to

be correct,) that he had faithfully transcribed the regulations and

penalties of the Imperial edicts, against the heretical congregations,

the clergy, and the people, who dissented from the established religion.

If the rights of conscience had been understood, the Catholics must have

condemned their past conduct or acquiesced in their actual suffering.

But they still persisted to refuse the indulgence which they claimed.

While they trembled under the lash of persecution, they praised the

laudable severity of Hunneric himself, who burnt or banished great

numbers of Manichæans; and they rejected, with horror, the ignominious

compromise, that the disciples of Arius and of Athanasius should enjoy a

reciprocal and similar toleration in the territories of the Romans, and

in those of the Vandals. II. The practice of a conference, which the

Catholics had so frequently used to insult and punish their obstinate

antagonists, was retorted against themselves. At the command of

Hunneric, four hundred and sixty-six orthodox bishops assembled at

Carthage; but when they were admitted into the hall of audience, they

had the mortification of beholding the Arian Cyrila exalted on the

patriarchal throne. The disputants were separated, after the mutual and

ordinary reproaches of noise and silence, of delay and precipitation, of

military force and of popular clamor. One martyr and one confessor were

selected among the Catholic bishops; twenty-eight escaped by flight,

and eighty-eight by conformity; forty-six were sent into Corsica to cut

timber for the royal navy; and three hundred and two were banished to

the different parts of Africa, exposed to the insults of their enemies,

and carefully deprived of all the temporal and spiritual comforts of

life. The hardships of ten years' exile must have reduced their numbers;

and if they had complied with the law of Thrasimund, which prohibited

any episcopal consecrations, the orthodox church of Africa must have

expired with the lives of its actual members. They disobeyed, and their

disobedience was punished by a second exile of two hundred and twenty

bishops into Sardinia; where they languished fifteen years, till the

accession of the gracious Hilderic. The two islands were judiciously

chosen by the malice of their Arian tyrants. Seneca, from his own

experience, has deplored and exaggerated the miserable state of Corsica,

and the plenty of Sardinia was overbalanced by the unwholesome quality

of the air. III. The zeal of Generic and his successors, for the

conversion of the Catholics, must have rendered them still more jealous

to guard the purity of the Vandal faith. Before the churches were

finally shut, it was a crime to appear in a Barbarian dress; and those

who presumed to neglect the royal mandate were rudely dragged backwards

by their long hair. The palatine officers, who refused to profess the

religion of their prince, were ignominiously stripped of their honors

and employments; banished to Sardinia and Sicily; or condemned to the

servile labors of slaves and peasants in the fields of Utica. In

the districts which had been peculiarly allotted to the Vandals, the

exercise of the Catholic worship was more strictly prohibited; and

severe penalties were denounced against the guilt both of the missionary

and the proselyte. By these arts, the faith of the Barbarians was

preserved, and their zeal was inflamed: they discharged, with devout

fury, the office of spies, informers, or executioners; and whenever

their cavalry took the field, it was the favorite amusement of the march

to defile the churches, and to insult the clergy of the adverse faction.

IV. The citizens who had been educated in the luxury of the Roman

province, were delivered, with exquisite cruelty, to the Moors of the

desert. A venerable train of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, with a

faithful crowd of four thousand and ninety-six persons, whose guilt is

not precisely ascertained, were torn from their native homes, by the

command of Hunneric. During the night they were confined, like a herd of

cattle, amidst their own ordure: during the day they pursued their march

over the burning sands; and if they fainted under the heat and fatigue,

they were goaded, or dragged along, till they expired in the hands of

their tormentors. These unhappy exiles, when they reached the Moorish

huts, might excite the compassion of a people, whose native humanity

was neither improved by reason, nor corrupted by fanaticism: but if

they escaped the dangers, they were condemned to share the distress of a

savage life. V. It is incumbent on the authors of persecution previously

to reflect, whether they are determined to support it in the last

extreme. They excite the flame which they strive to extinguish; and it

soon becomes necessary to chastise the contumacy, as well as the crime,

of the offender. The fine, which he is unable or unwilling to discharge,

exposes his person to the severity of the law; and his contempt of

lighter penalties suggests the use and propriety of capital punishment.

Through the veil of fiction and declamation we may clearly perceive,

that the Catholics more especially under the reign of Hunneric, endured

the most cruel and ignominious treatment. Respectable citizens, noble

matrons, and consecrated virgins, were stripped naked, and raised in the

air by pulleys, with a weight suspended at their feet. In this painful

attitude their naked bodies were torn with scourges, or burnt in the

most tender parts with red-hot plates of iron. The amputation of the

ears the nose, the tongue, and the right hand, was inflicted by the

Arians; and although the precise number cannot be defined, it is evident

that many persons, among whom a bishop and a proconsul may be named,

were entitled to the crown of martyrdom. The same honor has been

ascribed to the memory of Count Sebastian, who professed the Nicene

creed with unshaken constancy; and Genseric might detest, as a heretic,

the brave and ambitious fugitive whom he dreaded as a rival. VI. A

new mode of conversion, which might subdue the feeble, and alarm the

timorous, was employed by the Arian ministers. They imposed, by fraud

or violence, the rites of baptism; and punished the apostasy of the

Catholics, if they disclaimed this odious and profane ceremony, which

scandalously violated the freedom of the will, and the unity of the

sacrament. The hostile sects had formerly allowed the validity of each

other's baptism; and the innovation, so fiercely maintained by the

Vandals, can be imputed only to the example and advice of the Donatists.

VII. The Arian clergy surpassed in religious cruelty the king and his

Vandals; but they were incapable of cultivating the spiritual vineyard,

which they were so desirous to possess. A patriarch might seat himself

on the throne of Carthage; some bishops, in the principal cities, might

usurp the place of their rivals; but the smallness of their numbers, and

their ignorance of the Latin language, disqualified the Barbarians for

the ecclesiastical ministry of a great church; and the Africans, after

the loss of their orthodox pastors, were deprived of the public exercise

of Christianity. VIII. The emperors were the natural protectors of the

Homoousian doctrine; and the faithful people of Africa, both as Romans

and as Catholics, preferred their lawful sovereignty to the usurpation

of the Barbarous heretics. During an interval of peace and friendship,

Hunneric restored the cathedral of Carthage; at the intercession of

Zeno, who reigned in the East, and of Placidia, the daughter and relict

of emperors, and the sister of the queen of the Vandals. But this decent

regard was of short duration; and the haughty tyrant displayed his

contempt for the religion of the empire, by studiously arranging the

bloody images of persecution, in all the principal streets through which

the Roman ambassador must pass in his way to the palace. An oath was

required from the bishops, who were assembled at Carthage, that they

would support the succession of his son Hilderic, and that they would

renounce all foreign or transmarine correspondence. This engagement,

consistent, as it should seem, with their moral and religious duties,

was refused by the more sagacious members of the assembly. Their

refusal, faintly colored by the pretence that it is unlawful for a

Christian to swear, must provoke the suspicions of a jealous tyrant.

Chapter XXXVII: Conversion Of The Barbarians To Christianity.—Part IV.

The Catholics, oppressed by royal and military force, were far superior

to their adversaries in numbers and learning. With the same weapons

which the Greek and Latin fathers had already provided for the Arian

controversy, they repeatedly silenced, or vanquished, the fierce and

illiterate successors of Ulphilas. The consciousness of their own

superiority might have raised them above the arts and passions of

religious warfare. Yet, instead of assuming such honorable pride, the

orthodox theologians were tempted, by the assurance of impunity, to

compose fictions, which must be stigmatized with the epithets of

fraud and forgery. They ascribed their own polemical works to the most

venerable names of Christian antiquity; the characters of Athanasius and

Augustin were awkwardly personated by Vigilius and his disciples; and

the famous creed, which so clearly expounds the mysteries of the Trinity

and the Incarnation, is deduced, with strong probability, from this

African school. Even the Scriptures themselves were profaned by their

rash and sacrilegious hands. The memorable text, which asserts the unity

of the three who bear witness in heaven, is condemned by the universal

silence of the orthodox fathers, ancient versions, and authentic

manuscripts. It was first alleged by the Catholic bishops whom Hunneric

summoned to the conference of Carthage. An allegorical interpretation,

in the form, perhaps, of a marginal note, invaded the text of the

Latin Bibles, which were renewed and corrected in a dark period of ten

centuries. After the invention of printing, the editors of the Greek

Testament yielded to their own prejudices, or those of the times; and

the pious fraud, which was embraced with equal zeal at Rome and at

Geneva, has been infinitely multiplied in every country and every

language of modern Europe.

The example of fraud must excite suspicion: and the specious miracles by

which the African Catholics have defended the truth and justice of their

cause, may be ascribed, with more reason, to their own industry, than

to the visible protection of Heaven. Yet the historian, who views this

religious conflict with an impartial eye, may condescend to mention

one preternatural event, which will edify the devout, and surprise the

incredulous. Tipasa, a maritime colony of Mauritania, sixteen miles

to the east of Cæsarea, had been distinguished, in every age, by

the orthodox zeal of its inhabitants. They had braved the fury of the

Donatists; they resisted, or eluded, the tyranny of the Arians. The

town was deserted on the approach of an heretical bishop: most of the

inhabitants who could procure ships passed over to the coast of Spain;

and the unhappy remnant, refusing all communion with the usurper,

still presumed to hold their pious, but illegal, assemblies. Their

disobedience exasperated the cruelty of Hunneric. A military count was

despatched from Carthage to Tipasa: he collected the Catholics in the

Forum, and, in the presence of the whole province, deprived the

guilty of their right hands and their tongues. But the holy confessors

continued to speak without tongues; and this miracle is attested by

Victor, an African bishop, who published a history of the persecution

within two years after the event. "If any one," says Victor, "should

doubt of the truth, let him repair to Constantinople, and listen to the

clear and perfect language of Restitutus, the sub-deacon, one of these

glorious sufferers, who is now lodged in the palace of the emperor

Zeno, and is respected by the devout empress." At Constantinople we

are astonished to find a cool, a learned, and unexceptionable witness,

without interest, and without passion. Æneas of Gaza, a Platonic

philosopher, has accurately described his own observations on these

African sufferers. "I saw them myself: I heard them speak: I diligently

inquired by what means such an articulate voice could be formed without

any organ of speech: I used my eyes to examine the report of my ears;

I opened their mouth, and saw that the whole tongue had been completely

torn away by the roots; an operation which the physicians generally

suppose to be mortal." The testimony of Æneas of Gaza might be

confirmed by the superfluous evidence of the emperor Justinian, in a

perpetual edict; of Count Marcellinus, in his Chronicle of the times;

and of Pope Gregory the First, who had resided at Constantinople, as the

minister of the Roman pontiff. They all lived within the compass of a

century; and they all appeal to their personal knowledge, or the public

notoriety, for the truth of a miracle, which was repeated in several

instances, displayed on the greatest theatre of the world, and

submitted, during a series of years, to the calm examination of the

senses. This supernatural gift of the African confessors, who spoke

without tongues, will command the assent of those, and of those only,

who already believe, that their language was pure and orthodox. But the

stubborn mind of an infidel, is guarded by secret, incurable suspicion;

and the Arian, or Socinian, who has seriously rejected the doctrine of

a Trinity, will not be shaken by the most plausible evidence of an

Athanasian miracle.

The Vandals and the Ostrogoths persevered in the profession of Arianism

till the final ruin of the kingdoms which they had founded in Africa and

Italy. The Barbarians of Gaul submitted to the orthodox dominion of the

Franks; and Spain was restored to the Catholic church by the voluntary

conversion of the Visigoths.

This salutary revolution was hastened by the example of a royal martyr,

whom our calmer reason may style an ungrateful rebel. Leovigild, the

Gothic monarch of Spain, deserved the respect of his enemies, and the

love of his subjects; the Catholics enjoyed a free toleration, and

his Arian synods attempted, without much success, to reconcile their

scruples by abolishing the unpopular rite of a second baptism. His

eldest son Hermenegild, who was invested by his father with the royal

diadem, and the fair principality of Baetica, contracted an honorable

and orthodox alliance with a Merovingian princess, the daughter of

Sigebert, king of Austrasia, and of the famous Brunechild. The beauteous

Ingundis, who was no more than thirteen years of age, was received,

beloved, and persecuted, in the Arian court of Toledo; and her religious

constancy was alternately assaulted with blandishments and violence by

Goisvintha, the Gothic queen, who abused the double claim of maternal

authority. Incensed by her resistance, Goisvintha seized the Catholic

princess by her long hair, inhumanly dashed her against the ground,

kicked her till she was covered with blood, and at last gave orders that

she should be stripped, and thrown into a basin, or fish-pond. Love and

honor might excite Hermenegild to resent this injurious treatment of

his bride; and he was gradually persuaded that Ingundis suffered for the

cause of divine truth. Her tender complaints, and the weighty arguments

of Leander, archbishop of Seville, accomplished his conversion and the

heir of the Gothic monarchy was initiated in the Nicene faith by the

solemn rites of confirmation. The rash youth, inflamed by zeal, and

perhaps by ambition, was tempted to violate the duties of a son and a

subject; and the Catholics of Spain, although they could not complain of

persecution, applauded his pious rebellion against an heretical father.

The civil war was protracted by the long and obstinate sieges of Merida,

Cordova, and Seville, which had strenuously espoused the party of

Hermenegild He invited the orthodox Barbarians, the Seuvi, and the

Franks, to the destruction of his native land; he solicited the

dangerous aid of the Romans, who possessed Africa, and a part of

the Spanish coast; and his holy ambassador, the archbishop Leander,

effectually negotiated in person with the Byzantine court. But the hopes

of the Catholics were crushed by the active diligence of the monarch who

commanded the troops and treasures of Spain; and the guilty Hermenegild,

after his vain attempts to resist or to escape, was compelled to

surrender himself into the hands of an incensed father. Leovigild was

still mindful of that sacred character; and the rebel, despoiled of the

regal ornaments, was still permitted, in a decent exile, to profess

the Catholic religion. His repeated and unsuccessful treasons at length

provoked the indignation of the Gothic king; and the sentence of death,

which he pronounced with apparent reluctance, was privately executed in

the tower of Seville. The inflexible constancy with which he refused to

accept the Arian communion, as the price of his safety, may excuse the

honors that have been paid to the memory of St. Hermenegild. His wife

and infant son were detained by the Romans in ignominious captivity;

and this domestic misfortune tarnished the glories of Leovigild, and

imbittered the last moments of his life.

His son and successor, Recared, the first Catholic king of Spain, had

imbibed the faith of his unfortunate brother, which he supported with

more prudence and success. Instead of revolting against his father,

Recared patiently expected the hour of his death. Instead of condemning

his memory, he piously supposed, that the dying monarch had abjured the

errors of Arianism, and recommended to his son the conversion of the

Gothic nation. To accomplish that salutary end, Recared convened an

assembly of the Arian clergy and nobles, declared himself a Catholic,

and exhorted them to imitate the example of their prince. The laborious

interpretation of doubtful texts, or the curious pursuit of metaphysical

arguments, would have excited an endless controversy; and the monarch

discreetly proposed to his illiterate audience two substantial and

visible arguments,—the testimony of Earth, and of Heaven. The Earth

had submitted to the Nicene synod: the Romans, the Barbarians, and the

inhabitants of Spain, unanimously professed the same orthodox creed;

and the Visigoths resisted, almost alone, the consent of the Christian

world. A superstitious age was prepared to reverence, as the testimony

of Heaven, the preternatural cures, which were performed by the skill or

virtue of the Catholic clergy; the baptismal fonts of Osset in Baetica,

which were spontaneously replenished every year, on the vigil of Easter;

and the miraculous shrine of St. Martin of Tours, which had already

converted the Suevic prince and people of Gallicia. The Catholic king

encountered some difficulties on this important change of the national

religion. A conspiracy, secretly fomented by the queen-dowager, was

formed against his life; and two counts excited a dangerous revolt in

the Narbonnese Gaul. But Recared disarmed the conspirators, defeated the

rebels, and executed severe justice; which the Arians, in their turn,

might brand with the reproach of persecution. Eight bishops, whose names

betray their Barbaric origin, abjured their errors; and all the books of

Arian theology were reduced to ashes, with the house in which they had

been purposely collected. The whole body of the Visigoths and Suevi were

allured or driven into the pale of the Catholic communion; the faith, at

least of the rising generation, was fervent and sincere: and the devout

liberality of the Barbarians enriched the churches and monasteries of

Spain. Seventy bishops, assembled in the council of Toledo, received the

submission of their conquerors; and the zeal of the Spaniards improved

the Nicene creed, by declaring the procession of the Holy Ghost from

the Son, as well as from the Father; a weighty point of doctrine, which

produced, long afterwards, the schism of the Greek and Latin churches.

The royal proselyte immediately saluted and consulted Pope Gregory,

surnamed the Great, a learned and holy prelate, whose reign was

distinguished by the conversion of heretics and infidels. The

ambassadors of Recared respectfully offered on the threshold of

the Vatican his rich presents of gold and gems; they accepted, as a

lucrative exchange, the hairs of St. John the Baptist; a cross, which

enclosed a small piece of the true wood; and a key, that contained some

particles of iron which had been scraped from the chains of St. Peter.

The same Gregory, the spiritual conqueror of Britain, encouraged the

pious Theodelinda, queen of the Lombards, to propagate the Nicene faith

among the victorious savages, whose recent Christianity was polluted by

the Arian heresy. Her devout labors still left room for the industry

and success of future missionaries; and many cities of Italy were still

disputed by hostile bishops. But the cause of Arianism was gradually

suppressed by the weight of truth, of interest, and of example; and

the controversy, which Egypt had derived from the Platonic school, was

terminated, after a war of three hundred years, by the final conversion

of the Lombards of Italy.

The first missionaries who preached the gospel to the Barbarians,

appealed to the evidence of reason, and claimed the benefit of

toleration. But no sooner had they established their spiritual dominion,

than they exhorted the Christian kings to extirpate, without mercy,

the remains of Roman or Barbaric superstition. The successors of Clovis

inflicted one hundred lashes on the peasants who refused to destroy

their idols; the crime of sacrificing to the demons was punished by

the Anglo-Saxon laws with the heavier penalties of imprisonment and

confiscation; and even the wise Alfred adopted, as an indispensable

duty, the extreme rigor of the Mosaic institutions. But the punishment

and the crime were gradually abolished among a Christian people;

the theological disputes of the schools were suspended by propitious

ignorance; and the intolerant spirit which could find neither idolaters

nor heretics, was reduced to the persecution of the Jews. That exiled

nation had founded some synagogues in the cities of Gaul; but Spain,

since the time of Hadrian, was filled with their numerous colonies.

The wealth which they accumulated by trade, and the management of the

finances, invited the pious avarice of their masters; and they might

be oppressed without danger, as they had lost the use, and even the

remembrance, of arms. Sisebut, a Gothic king, who reigned in the

beginning of the seventh century, proceeded at once to the last extremes

of persecution. Ninety thousand Jews were compelled to receive the

sacrament of baptism; the fortunes of the obstinate infidels were

confiscated, their bodies were tortured; and it seems doubtful whether

they were permitted to abandon their native country. The excessive zeal

of the Catholic king was moderated, even by the clergy of Spain, who

solemnly pronounced an inconsistent sentence: that the sacraments should

not be forcibly imposed; but that the Jews who had been baptized

should be constrained, for the honor of the church, to persevere in the

external practice of a religion which they disbelieved and detested.

Their frequent relapses provoked one of the successors of Sisebut to

banish the whole nation from his dominions; and a council of Toledo

published a decree, that every Gothic king should swear to maintain this

salutary edict. But the tyrants were unwilling to dismiss the victims,

whom they delighted to torture, or to deprive themselves of the

industrious slaves, over whom they might exercise a lucrative

oppression. The Jews still continued in Spain, under the weight of

the civil and ecclesiastical laws, which in the same country have been

faithfully transcribed in the Code of the Inquisition. The Gothic kings

and bishops at length discovered, that injuries will produce hatred, and

that hatred will find the opportunity of revenge. A nation, the secret

or professed enemies of Christianity, still multiplied in servitude and

distress; and the intrigues of the Jews promoted the rapid success of

the Arabian conquerors.

As soon as the Barbarians withdrew their powerful support, the unpopular

heresy of Arius sunk into contempt and oblivion. But the Greeks still

retained their subtle and loquacious disposition: the establishment of

an obscure doctrine suggested new questions, and new disputes; and it

was always in the power of an ambitious prelate, or a fanatic monk,

to violate the peace of the church, and, perhaps, of the empire. The

historian of the empire may overlook those disputes which were confined

to the obscurity of schools and synods. The Manichæans, who labored

to reconcile the religions of Christ and of Zoroaster, had secretly

introduced themselves into the provinces: but these foreign sectaries

were involved in the common disgrace of the Gnostics, and the Imperial

laws were executed by the public hatred. The rational opinions of the

Pelagians were propagated from Britain to Rome, Africa, and Palestine,

and silently expired in a superstitious age. But the East was distracted

by the Nestorian and Eutychian controversies; which attempted to explain

the mystery of the incarnation, and hastened the ruin of Christianity in

her native land. These controversies were first agitated under the reign

of the younger Theodosius: but their important consequences extend

far beyond the limits of the present volume. The metaphysical chain of

argument, the contests of ecclesiastical ambition, and their political

influence on the decline of the Byzantine empire, may afford an

interesting and instructive series of history, from the general councils

of Ephesus and Chalcedon, to the conquest of the East by the successors

of Mahomet.

Chapter XXXVIII: Reign Of Clovis.—Part I.

Reign And Conversion Of Clovis.—His Victories Over The

Alemanni, Burgundians, And Visigoths.—Establishment Of The

French Monarchy In Gaul.—Laws Of The Barbarians.—State Of

The Romans.—The Visigoths Of Spain.—Conquest Of Britain By

The Saxons.

The Gauls, who impatiently supported the Roman yoke, received a

memorable lesson from one of the lieutenants of Vespasian, whose weighty

sense has been refined and expressed by the genius of Tacitus. "The

protection of the republic has delivered Gaul from internal discord

and foreign invasions. By the loss of national independence, you have

acquired the name and privileges of Roman citizens. You enjoy, in common

with yourselves, the permanent benefits of civil government; and your

remote situation is less exposed to the accidental mischiefs of tyranny.

Instead of exercising the rights of conquest, we have been contented to

impose such tributes as are requisite for your own preservation. Peace

cannot be secured without armies; and armies must be supported at the

expense of the people. It is for your sake, not for our own, that we

guard the barrier of the Rhine against the ferocious Germans, who have

so often attempted, and who will always desire, to exchange the solitude

of their woods and morasses for the wealth and fertility of Gaul. The

fall of Rome would be fatal to the provinces; and you would be buried in

the ruins of that mighty fabric, which has been raised by the valor and

wisdom of eight hundred years. Your imaginary freedom would be insulted

and oppressed by a savage master; and the expulsion of the Romans would

be succeeded by the eternal hostilities of the Barbarian conquerors."

This salutary advice was accepted, and this strange prediction was

accomplished. In the space of four hundred years, the hardy Gauls, who

had encountered the arms of Cæsar, were imperceptibly melted into the

general mass of citizens and subjects: the Western empire was dissolved;

and the Germans, who had passed the Rhine, fiercely contended for the

possession of Gaul, and excited the contempt, or abhorrence, of its

peaceful and polished inhabitants. With that conscious pride which

the preeminence of knowledge and luxury seldom fails to inspire, they

derided the hairy and gigantic savages of the North; their rustic

manners, dissonant joy, voracious appetite, and their horrid appearance,

equally disgusting to the sight and to the smell. The liberal studies

were still cultivated in the schools of Autun and Bordeaux; and the

language of Cicero and Virgil was familiar to the Gallic youth. Their

ears were astonished by the harsh and unknown sounds of the Germanic

dialect, and they ingeniously lamented that the trembling muses fled

from the harmony of a Burgundian lyre. The Gauls were endowed with all

the advantages of art and nature; but as they wanted courage to defend

them, they were justly condemned to obey, and even to flatter, the

victorious Barbarians, by whose clemency they held their precarious

fortunes and their lives.

As soon as Odoacer had extinguished the Western empire, he sought the

friendship of the most powerful of the Barbarians. The new sovereign of

Italy resigned to Euric, king of the Visigoths, all the Roman conquests

beyond the Alps, as far as the Rhine and the Ocean: and the senate might

confirm this liberal gift with some ostentation of power, and without

any real loss of revenue and dominion. The lawful pretensions of Euric

were justified by ambition and success; and the Gothic nation might

aspire, under his command, to the monarchy of Spain and Gaul. Arles

and Marseilles surrendered to his arms: he oppressed the freedom of

Auvergne; and the bishop condescended to purchase his recall from exile

by a tribute of just, but reluctant praise. Sidonius waited before the

gates of the palace among a crowd of ambassadors and suppliants; and

their various business at the court of Bordeaux attested the power,

and the renown, of the king of the Visigoths. The Heruli of the distant

ocean, who painted their naked bodies with its crulean color, implored

his protection; and the Saxons respected the maritime provinces of

a prince, who was destitute of any naval force. The tall Burgundians

submitted to his authority; nor did he restore the captive Franks, till

he had imposed on that fierce nation the terms of an unequal peace. The

Vandals of Africa cultivated his useful friendship; and the Ostrogoths

of Pannonia were supported by his powerful aid against the oppression of

the neighboring Huns. The North (such are the lofty strains of the poet)

was agitated or appeased by the nod of Euric; the great king of Persia

consulted the oracle of the West; and the aged god of the Tyber was

protected by the swelling genius of the Garonne. The fortune of nations

has often depended on accidents; and France may ascribe her greatness

to the premature death of the Gothic king, at a time when his son Alaric

was a helpless infant, and his adversary Clovis an ambitious and valiant

youth.

While Childeric, the father of Clovis, lived an exile in Germany, he

was hospitably entertained by the queen, as well as by the king, of the

Thuringians. After his restoration, Basina escaped from her husband's

bed to the arms of her lover; freely declaring, that if she had known a

man wiser, stronger, or more beautiful, than Childeric, that man should

have been the object of her preference. Clovis was the offspring of this

voluntary union; and, when he was no more than fifteen years of age, he

succeeded, by his father's death, to the command of the Salian tribe.

The narrow limits of his kingdom were confined to the island of the

Batavians, with the ancient dioceses of Tournay and Arras; and at the

baptism of Clovis the number of his warriors could not exceed five

thousand. The kindred tribes of the Franks, who had seated themselves

along the Belgic rivers, the Scheld, the Meuse, the Moselle, and the

Rhine, were governed by their independent kings, of the Merovingian

race; the equals, the allies, and sometimes the enemies of the

Salic prince. But the Germans, who obeyed, in peace, the hereditary

jurisdiction of their chiefs, were free to follow the standard of

a popular and victorious general; and the superior merit of Clovis

attracted the respect and allegiance of the national confederacy. When

he first took the field, he had neither gold and silver in his coffers,

nor wine and corn in his magazine; but he imitated the example of

Cæsar, who, in the same country, had acquired wealth by the sword, and

purchased soldiers with the fruits of conquest. After each successful

battle or expedition, the spoils were accumulated in one common

mass; every warrior received his proportionable share; and the royal

prerogative submitted to the equal regulations of military law.

The untamed spirit of the Barbarians was taught to acknowledge the

advantages of regular discipline. At the annual review of the month of

March, their arms were diligently inspected; and when they traversed a

peaceful territory, they were prohibited from touching a blade of grass.

The justice of Clovis was inexorable; and his careless or disobedient

soldiers were punished with instant death. It would be superfluous to

praise the valor of a Frank; but the valor of Clovis was directed by

cool and consummate prudence. In all his transactions with mankind, he

calculated the weight of interest, of passion, and of opinion; and

his measures were sometimes adapted to the sanguinary manners of the

Germans, and sometimes moderated by the milder genius of Rome, and

Christianity. He was intercepted in the career of victory, since he died

in the forty-fifth year of his age: but he had already accomplished,

in a reign of thirty years, the establishment of the French monarchy in

Gaul.

The first exploit of Clovis was the defeat of Syagrius, the son of

Ægidius; and the public quarrel might, on this occasion, be inflamed

by private resentment. The glory of the father still insulted the

Merovingian race; the power of the son might excite the jealous ambition

of the king of the Franks. Syagrius inherited, as a patrimonial estate,

the city and diocese of Soissons: the desolate remnant of the second

Belgic, Rheims and Troyes, Beauvais and Amiens, would naturally submit

to the count or patrician: and after the dissolution of the Western

empire, he might reign with the title, or at least with the authority,

of king of the Romans. As a Roman, he had been educated in the liberal

studies of rhetoric and jurisprudence; but he was engaged by accident

and policy in the familiar use of the Germanic idiom. The independent

Barbarians resorted to the tribunal of a stranger, who possessed the

singular talent of explaining, in their native tongue, the dictates of

reason and equity. The diligence and affability of their judge rendered

him popular, the impartial wisdom of his decrees obtained their

voluntary obedience, and the reign of Syagrius over the Franks and

Burgundians seemed to revive the original institution of civil society.

In the midst of these peaceful occupations, Syagrius received, and

boldly accepted, the hostile defiance of Clovis; who challenged his

rival in the spirit, and almost in the language, of chivalry, to appoint

the day and the field of battle. In the time of Cæsar Soissons would

have poured forth a body of fifty thousand horse and such an army might

have been plentifully supplied with shields, cuirasses, and military

engines, from the three arsenals or manufactures of the city. But the

courage and numbers of the Gallic youth were long since exhausted; and

the loose bands of volunteers, or mercenaries, who marched under the

standard of Syagrius, were incapable of contending with the national

valor of the Franks. It would be ungenerous without some more accurate

knowledge of his strength and resources, to condemn the rapid flight of

Syagrius, who escaped, after the loss of a battle, to the distant court

of Thoulouse. The feeble minority of Alaric could not assist or protect

an unfortunate fugitive; the pusillanimous Goths were intimidated by the

menaces of Clovis; and the Roman king, after a short confinement,

was delivered into the hands of the executioner. The Belgic cities

surrendered to the king of the Franks; and his dominions were enlarged

towards the East by the ample diocese of Tongres which Clovis subdued in

the tenth year of his reign.

The name of the Alemanni has been absurdly derived from their imaginary

settlement on the banks of the Leman Lake. That fortunate district,

from the lake to the Avenche, and Mount Jura, was occupied by the

Burgundians. The northern parts of Helvetia had indeed been subdued by

the ferocious Alemanni, who destroyed with their own hands the fruits

of their conquest. A province, improved and adorned by the arts of

Rome, was again reduced to a savage wilderness; and some vestige of the

stately Vindonissa may still be discovered in the fertile and populous

valley of the Aar. From the source of the Rhine to its conflux with the

Mein and the Moselle, the formidable swarms of the Alemanni commanded

either side of the river, by the right of ancient possession, or recent

victory. They had spread themselves into Gaul, over the modern provinces

of Alsace and Lorraine; and their bold invasion of the kingdom of

Cologne summoned the Salic prince to the defence of his Ripuarian

allies. Clovis encountered the invaders of Gaul in the plain of Tolbiac,

about twenty-four miles from Cologne; and the two fiercest nations of

Germany were mutually animated by the memory of past exploits, and the

prospect of future greatness. The Franks, after an obstinate struggle,

gave way; and the Alemanni, raising a shout of victory, impetuously

pressed their retreat. But the battle was restored by the valor, and

the conduct, and perhaps by the piety, of Clovis; and the event of the

bloody day decided forever the alternative of empire or servitude. The

last king of the Alemanni was slain in the field, and his people were

slaughtered or pursued, till they threw down their arms, and yielded

to the mercy of the conqueror. Without discipline it was impossible

for them to rally: they had contemptuously demolished the walls and

fortifications which might have protected their distress; and they were

followed into the heart of their forests by an enemy not less active, or

intrepid, than themselves. The great Theodoric congratulated the victory

of Clovis, whose sister Albofleda the king of Italy had lately married;

but he mildly interceded with his brother in favor of the suppliants

and fugitives, who had implored his protection. The Gallic territories,

which were possessed by the Alemanni, became the prize of their

conqueror; and the haughty nation, invincible, or rebellious, to the

arms of Rome, acknowledged the sovereignty of the Merovingian kings,

who graciously permitted them to enjoy their peculiar manners and

institutions, under the government of official, and, at length, of

hereditary, dukes. After the conquest of the Western provinces, the

Franks alone maintained their ancient habitations beyond the Rhine. They

gradually subdued, and civilized, the exhausted countries, as far as the

Elbe, and the mountains of Bohemia; and the peace of Europe was secured

by the obedience of Germany.